Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @01:47PM
from the unbounded-can-of-worms dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An article at Dr. Dobb's looks into the consequences of a dangerous idea from Oracle during their legal battle with Google: 'that Google had violated Oracle's Java copyrights by reimplementing Java APIs in Android.' The issue is very much unsettled in the courts, but the judge in this case instructed the jury to assume the APIs were copyrightable. 'In a nutshell, if the jury sides with Oracle that the copyrights in the headers of every file of the Java source base apply specifically to the syntax of the APIs, then Oracle can extract payment and penalties from Google for having implemented those APIs without Oracle's blessing (or, in more specific terms, without a license). Should this come to pass, numerous products will suddenly find themselves on an uncertain legal standing in which the previously benign but now newly empowered copyright holders might assert punitive copyright claims. Chief among these would be any re-implementation of an existing language. So, Jython, IronPython, and PyPy for Python; JRuby, IronRuby, and Rubinius for Ruby; Mono for C# and VB; possibly C++ for C, GCC for C and C++ and Objective-C; and so forth. And of course, all the various browsers that use JavaScript might owe royalties to the acquirers of Netscape's intellectual property.'"

Not just WINE. The Open Group, for example, would be able to charge royalties for any UNIX-like system implementing the APIs described in POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. AT&T might still own copyrights on the original UNIX and C library APIs (since they were not thought to be copyrightable, they would probably not have been transferred, but if they were then Novell may own them), so everyone who implements basic C stuff like printf() would be liable.

It actually gets worse than even that. If an API is copyrightable, then all of the law related to derived works also applies. That means that whoever copyrighted the first interface for an ordered collection can count any subsequent API that appears to be inspired by it as a derived work. Do you use subscripting for array indexing? Do you have an API for storing a key-value pair in an keyed collection? You probably owe someone money...

That's actually one of Google's defenses. They didn't copy the entire Java API, just a portion of it. So no, if the ruling is in Oracle's favor (which is unlikely but not impossible), then you can't get away with fair-use.

This is really, really scary for open source and GNU-like projects -- it's an attempt by a corporation to define copyright law in a way that lets big business completely shut down the academic "free exchange" culture once and for all.

That's actually one of Google's defenses. They didn't copy the entire Java API, just a portion of it. So no, if the ruling is in Oracle's favor (which is unlikely but not impossible), then you can't get away with fair-use.

There are three different questions that have to be resolved in Oracle's favor for a verdict in Oracle's favor on this point:1. (legal) Are the APIs subject to copyright protection,2. (factual) Did Google infringe the exclusive rights of Oracle as copyright holder of the APIs,3. (factual) Was Google's infringement outside the scope of the exception carved out of the exclusive rights under fair use.

Each logically only requires a response if the preceding question is answered in the affirmative. #2 is presented to the jury as a question they must answer as if #1 were answered in the affirmative, though the court has not ruled on it; #3 is presented to the jury as a question they must answer if and only if they answer yes to #2.

A ruling in Oracle's favor on the legal issue (#1) would not obviously not mean fair use was not available as a defense. Nor, obviously, would a finding of fact in Oracle's favor on #2.

But even a verdict in Oracle's favor (meaning that all three issues were resolved in Oracle's favor) wouldn't mean that fair use wasn't available, it would just mean that the jury in this particular case didn't find Google's particular use of Oracle's copyright-protected APIs was fair use. Fact findings are not, however, precedential or binding on future triers of fact, only legal rulings are. (And the only legal ruling related to the availability of fair use in this case is that, at a minimum, it is an available defense, because if it wasn't, question #3 wouldn't be put to the jury at all, or would be put to the jury with the same restrictions as #2 in that it was waiting on a legal ruling on the applicability of the defense.)

It was a legal case just like this which gave us the whole concept of software patents, so the concern is just as legitimate. Software patents were originally just as limited, and indeed the original judicial rulings on software patents were even more restricted than is being proposed here for API copyright.

Heck, I would be much more in favor of having an API patented rather than copyrighted, as the concept of life + 70 year copyrights implies a much longer duration over "intellectual property claims" for this kind of activity. At least a patented API would eventually enter the public domain in my lifetime.

If this case were to go in Oracle's favour and if it were then allowed to set a precedent, the US software industry would be seriously damaged by legal infighting for a years to come. Even if a few large businesses on the scale of Google and Oracle could survive, in the same way that they play the patent pooling game to neutralise that threat from other big business while still screwing small businesses, innovation would die almost overnight and the next big software businesses would all be based outside the US. As the rest of the world looked on, bemused by the litigious culture of US business finally imploding, the total US economy would take a noticeable hit, Silicon Valley would become a historical footnote as investors fled to tech hubs in other jurisdictions, etc.

And so, if this were allowed to stand, it would suck for Google for about ten minutes, and then lobbyists backed by more money than has been printed in the history of humanity would descend on Washington and buy legislation to trump the court case and fix the problem.

By international treaty and law, all copyrights are honored worldwide. Therefore, what is copyrighted in the U.S. is also copyrighted in Europe immediately, and vice versa (and Asia, too, technically all the GATT countries, which is pretty much everybody worth conducting business with).

So, unless you want to undo almost a century of globalization, this will affect legal software worldwide, unless and until copyright laws can be amended to more sane terms.

That is absolutely the most harebrained scheme I've ever seen floated on Slashdot, possibly the entire internet, and I've been here a while. Think harder. How exactly are juries supposed to remain impartial if they're on the hook for their decisions? Their purpose is not to invent the law or implement it. It is simply to decide, fairly, whether some party has violated the law. Punishing them for the outcomes of their decisions amounts to punishing 12 randomly selected people for making the mistake of having a public address, or the mistake of living in the wrong country.

Don't be stupid. In all the reporting I've seen, the vast majority of 'guilty but really innocent' problems occur because either the defence is incompetent of the prosecution is behaving illegally. The jury decides on the evidence placed in front of them, not on some 'universal truth' that they don't have access to.

There's a better solution: eliminate juries altogether. Many countries don't have them at all, such as Germany and Italy (which have "lay judges" instead, but these people have to meet educational minimums and get special training, and aren't the biggest morons off the street they could find like we have here in the USA). Spain has tried bringing in juries with bad results:"Jury trials have been very slowly introduced in Spain and have often produced less than desirable results. One of the first cases was that of Mikel Otegi who was tried in 1997 for the murder of two police officers. After a confused trial, five jury members of a total of nine voted to acquit and the judge ordered the accused set free. This verdict shocked the nation. Another alleged miscarriage of justice by jury trial was the Wanninkhof murder case."

Not just WINE. The Open Group, for example, would be able to charge royalties for any UNIX-like system implementing the APIs described in POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. AT&T might still own copyrights on the original UNIX and C library APIs (since they were not thought to be copyrightable, they would probably not have been transferred, but if they were then Novell may own them), so everyone who implements basic C stuff like printf() would be liable.

This is what the SCO lawsuit was about. It's basically over (except that every time someone announces an end, there is another re-file of some sort)... but even groklaw [groklaw.net] has moved on to Oracle v. Google.

Also, Caldera (which I think was a previous incarnation of SCO) released versions of Unix developed by AT&T prior to System III and System V as open source. [groklaw.net]

It actually gets worse than even that. If an API is copyrightable, then all of the law related to derived works also applies. That means that whoever copyrighted the first interface for an ordered collection can count any subsequent API that appears to be inspired by it as a derived work. Do you use subscripting for array indexing? Do you have an API for storing a key-value pair in an keyed collection? You probably owe someone money...

No. Patents, not copyrights, can be used to claim ownership of ideas. Copyrights are used to claim ownership of specific, concrete realization of ideas, covering the "look and feel" and surface aspects rather than essential mechanisms.

Copyrights are used to claim ownership of specific, concrete realization of ideas, covering the "look and feel" and surface aspects rather than essential mechanisms.

Look and feel of an application is not copyrightable. Microsoft fought apple over this a long time ago and won. Apple had claimed Windows infringed the look and feel of Mac OS. That precedent is one really good thing MS has done for the world.

This is incorrect. MSFT lost, and paid a license fee for Windows 1.0 to Apple. When MSFT tried again with Windows 2.0, Apple sued again but the court ruled that the previous license covered the similarities, so MSFT won that round.

Which is why we have various 'franchises' like the Star Trek franchise, the Star Wars franchise, the Bourne franchise, ad nauseum, leading to more and more sequels/prequels/whateverquels. If you don't get in there first and stake a claim to your 'world', somebody else will and screw you out of any possible money you might have made on it.

With 'derivitives' now looked at as 'covered' by the original copyright, it's becoming possible to copyright ideas and plots. You may think your story is original, but s

Actually you would probably be better off if it WAS Microsoft, as from the sounds of those names they are venture capitalists, aka vultures. MSFT would be leery of an outright lawsuit going after Linux, after all they just got off the hook on antitrust and they sure as hell wouldn't want to have several governments looking at them closely again, but venture capitalists are gonna go for the money PERIOD. After all those corporate raiding types have a rep slightly below leeches anyway so they won't give a shit if there is cash involved.

Of course there is even bigger problems than who owns the old Novell rights and that is this: If this stands you won't be able to do jack shit unless you are one of the "big boys' or working for them. after all they'll be quick to sign cross licensing agreements to keep this from becoming mutually assured destruction, same as even when they were tied up in a lawsuit neither Intel or AMD tried to rescind on their cross licensing of X86, but only the old guard with big bux will be able to play because without enough weight to get your own agreement you'd be sued to death. that would mean you could probably count the corps on two hands..Apple, Google, MSFT, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, it would be a "billionaire boys club" and nobody else would be invited. Scary thought. Any venture capitalists show up with copyrights i'm sure one of the big boys will buy them out to put more weapons in their warchest.

Now does anybody doubt that I'm right when i said the west will be deader than Dixie thanks to all the "IP" minefields and the east will rise to take our place? The copyright and patent minefields are already so damned thick with many things you'd be better off building in China and if they put western 150+ year copyrights on APIs? Give it up chuck, software development here will grind to a halt. The same as the USA built off the "stolen IP" of the UK and Europe to build themselves into an empire during the industrial revolution so too will China and India do the same to us while our own IP laws bury us in lawsuits.

This is a Darwinian process. The US is making itself so utterly uncompetitive with no production no manufacturing no products just lawsuits. Any country with the strength to ignore our bullshit will be so much more productive than the US and its thralls that they will come to dominate us economically and eventually militarily.

At this point it appears that China is the only country that isn't controlled by the same multinational corporations that govern the US, and has any chance of not becoming part of the same game.

China is controlled by basically the same thing with a different name.
The country you are looking for is South Korea. They had a technological and industrial boom and now have a high standard of living and are leaders in technology and they DGAF about copyright.

Steel is no longer made in America mainly because of aggressive "dumping" of steel from foreign sources, where steel was sold in America for a price cheaper than it could even be shipped. When steel makers basically had to give away their product in order to remain competitive, it was no wonder that they ended up just closing up shop instead. This was due to insane trade laws that basically threw American manufacturers under the bus on the goal for global "free trade" ideals.

You could use almost any consumer product in the same category though. America at one point produced most of the televisions, nearly 100% of integrated circuits, and a huge number of consumer electronics in general. None of those are made in America any more, at least in any significant quantities that matter in global markets.

Probably the Greek would be (also?) the lucky ones, talking about derivative work...

"The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome. The Etruscan alphabet was in turn adopted and further modified by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language." (Wikipedia)

What a nice economy you have there, it would be a shame if someone were to park a carrier battle group off your largest port, closing it for a year or two. Now be a good lapdog and sign the patent treaty.

Exactly. This sort of thing doesn't happen in a vacuum; it has a real and tangible negative effect on the economy. These leeches have built up such a web of institutionalized parasitism dragging the whole economy down, which is exactly why we remain in this same mess today with everyone struggling just to get by. We the People need the chains unclasped from our ankles so that we can fulfill our potential.

Don't read too much into the bad summary. The judge told the jury to determine whether Google infringed Oracle's copyright assuming the API can be copyrighted. If they find that Google did, then the judge will rule whether the API can in fact be copyrighted, but if they say that Google didn't infringe in either case, he doesn't have to make a ruling on the question (and, particularly, he avoids the scenario where he rules API's aren't copyrightable, an appeals court reverses him, and they have to redo the trial because the jury has been dismissed).

Yes, it does, just reread the offered contract. You'll find, once you strip out the legalese bullshit, that your ideas in any area you create them in become permenantly and irrevocably to that company. Those ideas could fuel lawsuits for the next thousand years, if the US lasts that long...

And with that, the internet fell, and mankind returned to the stone age.

Except that it did not, at least not yet.

The article's author fails to understand what is going on here. The judge has said that he will decide if API's are copyrightable, but he has punted the decision. Only if the jury finds that there was copyright infringement relating to the APIs will the judge actually decide that issue.

Since the judge has not made the decision about APIs and that it is his decision, not the jury's, the only sensible approach is to have the jury assume that API's are copyrightable.

Seems a bit non-sensical to me: "You, spend the next several weeks doing a bunch of work based on an assumption that I may invalidate, but only after you are done."

Since the jury will have ruled on the premise that the APIs are protected by copyright, and since whatever the judge rules on the legal question is bound to appealed by one side or the other, the question of fact will have been resolved by the jury if it turns out to be relevant either based on the trial judges decision or based on an appellate d

Seems a bit non-sensical to me: "You, spend the next several weeks doing a bunch of work based on an assumption that I may invalidate, but only after you are done."

Absolutely not. Considering how often Slashdot posters claim that judges are stupid, you show a distinct lack of logic.

The judge decides matters of law. Whether an API is protected by copyright or not is a matter of law and will be decided by the judge. The jury decides matters of fact. Whether Google copied the API or not is a matter of fact, to be decided by the jury. Whether Google should be convicted is a combination of both. The judge just tells the jury not to waste their time thinking about matters of law, and not let their opinion about the law influence their decision.

In C-style languages, what the judge is doing can be represented using the logical and operator. Nobody complains about that one.

Given the Berkeley-BSD/AT&T case, and the Thread-X/Green-Hills case, I think there's already precedent on the copyrightability of API's. And if we're going to change things now, that's going to have seriously wide-ranging effects. If we're going to send the message that we might change our minds going forward, that's going to have wide-ranging effects. OTOH, it might make non-open software systems even less attractive.

Wasn't there a US president who's strategy during the cold war was to convince the Russians that he was borderline suicidally insane? To the point of having the ambassadors and other representatives tell their Russian counterparts how terrified they were of what he might do?

In February 1982, AMD signed a contract with Intel, becoming a licensed second-source manufacturer of 8086 and 8088 processors. IBM wanted to use the Intel 8088 in its IBM PC, but IBM's policy at the time was to require at least two sources for its chips. AMD later produced the Am286 under the same arrangement, but Intel canceled the agreement in 1986 and refused to convey technical details of the i386 part. AMD challenged Intel's decision to cancel the agreement and won in arbitration, but Intel disputed this decision. A long legal dispute followed, ending in 1994 when the Supreme Court of California sided with AMD. Subsequent legal disputes centered on whether AMD had legal rights to use derivatives of Intel's microcode. In the face of uncertainty, AMD was forced to develop clean room designed versions of Intel code.

In 1991, AMD released the Am386, its clone of the Intel 386 processor. It took less than a year for the company to sell a million units. Later, the Am486 was used by a number of large original equipment manufacturers, including Compaq, and proved popular. Another Am486-based product, the Am5x86, continued AMD's success as a low-price alternative. However, as product cycles shortened in the PC industry, the process of reverse engineering Intel's products became an ever less viable strategy for AMD.

which up to this day isn't copyrighted and doesn't need a licence so they more than likely don't have one to redistribute and create derivative works for SQL as why would you pay to licence something that doesn't need to be licensed? that's a waste of money.

while this decision could cause a shit storm, it would be kinda nice to have Oracle get a taste of their own meds

Why do you assume SQL isn't copyrighted? Our fine copyright law makes everything copyrighted unless you specifically release it. If this decision says APIs are copyrightable IBM will automatically have that copyright since they created SQL. The court will simply be acknowledging that IBM has always had a copyright on SQL even if IBM didn't know they had it. And thanks to the Mickey Mouse in Perpetuity Act (Bono Act) IBM will probably have that copyright for several hundred years. Just because they haven't been asking for licenses and fees doesn't mean they can't start with Oracle at the front of the line.

Allowing APIs to be copyright will destroy the computing industry in the US. Can you imagine the damage of AT&T going after the C run-time library?

copyrighting code at all is a slippery slope that leads to nothing but hair-splitting. Even if the judge throws that particular claim out, then what? It's legal to copy the top-level calls of someone's API, but illegal to make underlying code that too closely resembles the original? It seems like any line that gets drawn here is going to be stupid and arbitrary, of the form "you are legally allowed to copy/re-implement a certain percentage of a copyrighted work, but no more than that percentage!"

Then you have a developer community whose primary incentive is to reinvent the wheel, not to develop new innovations on already-proven technology.

The judge told the jury to ASSUME that it is copyrightable and that the actual choice of copyrightability was his decision to make. This makes it so that appeals court will have an easier time based off his decision by not having to bring the jury back. He has not made that decision yet.

This. The judge basically said 'The question of whether copyright law can apply at all in this situation is a legal one, and needs to be handled by someone who has studied the law. That's me. Your job is to decide if the law was violated. So, assume the law exists, while I go research.' The judge can still come back and say the law doesn't apply at all, so it doesn't matter what the jury says, but in the meantime the jury doesn't have to be confused by arguments over whether the law applies.

Ah, Jury Nullification. Something that should happen far more than it does. Many juries are even told that they can't rule on the legality of the law in question - total bullshit, but that's the system we live in.

There was a post on GrokLaw about the terrible reporting about this. The Jury was told to assume that they can be copyrighted and render a decision.

IF the jury says Google violated that hypothetical copyright, THEN the judge will rule on if that stuff can be copyrighted. If the jury says the hypothetical copyright wasn't violated, then the judge won't need to rule on it.

The API copyright is but one part of the whole trial. Even after the jury comes back, there is still a patent issue and then damages portion (though this depends on how the jury decides in the prior two phases). And IIRC, the API copyright issue is but one part of the copyright complaints brought by Google (though I think most/all of the others were already tossed).

Judges do things like this a lot. If the Oracle legal team presented what he thought to be a good case in favor of the copyrightability of the APIs, then he might've decided to let it go to the jury rather than let Oracle appeal. This way, Oracle can't say they lost because they couldn't present their argument, and the judge can use case law later on so that Google can't appeal because the jury had no clue what they were talking about.

Finally, just because case law has set a precedent does not necessarily mean that the precedent is correct or that a future case can't lead to that precedent being overturned. This is in large part why our system exists as it does, with courts of increasing national authority that can step in and correct a lower court for decisions which should not have been rendered or for the abdication of due process.

Understand, I certainly don't want Oracle to win this one, but I do understand the judge's thinking. This isn't an inefficiency of the judge, it's the judge exploiting his knowledge of the system he works in every day.

First, if the jury finds that google did NOT violate the hypothetical API copyright, Oracle's case ends there. You can't appeal the finding of the jury, so that matter could be settled immediately and completely and saving the appeal court's resources.

If, instead, the judge immediately declares that the API is not copyrightable, that decision can (and will) be appealed. If he is later overturned (no matter how unlikely), that would then require a NEW jury trial to then decide if google actually violated the copyright. Since the jury has already heard the evidence and has other things to decide, why not let them make that decision right now.

So yes, this seriously saves resources and this judge really seems to understand things.

The summary is wrong. The judge has not said that APIs are eligible for copyright; his ruling on that will come later. He merely asked the jury to determine whether Google copied the Java APIs, regardless of whether it was legal or not.

This makes sense from a procedural point of view. In the court system, juries determine matters of fact and judges determine matters of law. The judge knows that this case will be appealed regardless of how he rules, so he is playing it safe and making sure that the jury determines any matters of fact that may come to play during the appeals process to avoid a second jury trial later.

Ever heard of jury nullification [wikipedia.org]? Despite what most judges, lawyers, law enforcement, and lawmakers want you to believe, in the US, the jury has the right to decide the facts and whether on not the law applies (or is just) in this situation.

Jury nullification is a constitutional doctrine which allows juries to acquit criminal defendants who are technically guilty, but who do not deserve punishment. It occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge's instructions as to the law.

A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it. If a pattern of acquittals develops, however, in response to repeated attempts to prosecute a statutory offence, this can have the de facto effect of invalidating the statute. A pattern of jury nullification may indicate public opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment.

The article claims Mono could be sued for copyright infringements, but actually Microsoft's public statements would count against any legal actions they could attempt against Miguel De Icaza.

...which means it's one of the few languages/APIs that could survive unscathed...

...which means Oracle's attempts to control Java could end up sending EVERYONE, including the GNU/Linux community who, thus far, have given.NET the cold shoulder, into the embrace of its earnest rival, destroying Java completely.

If I had any concerns about.NET beyond the fact that Mono is pretty crappy and every Mono app ever written feels like it's being hosted under Wine, I'd be upset about this. But actually... from what I hear, C Sharp is a very nice programming language...

Unless I missed something, Microsoft only publicly said that they would not sue Mono over patents. They didn't say IP, because they did not want to implicitly grant Mono the use of.NET-related trademarks. They did not license the copyright on any.NET things to the Mono project either because, prior to this, a clean-room reimplementation did not require a copyright license.

Kinda. C# and.NET and the standard library are a ECMA and IEEE standard. (Microsoft pushed them in as standards), I'm not entirely sure if they did that royalty free (I have a feeling they did), but even if they didn't, ECMA/IEEE requires RAND licensing at worst.

What is an API? It's basically an agreement about the ordering and identification of arguments either in memory or in series of network messages. If the judge actually finds that the API itself is copyrightable, then any computer program that writes to a standard interface is completely screwed. Write your own SMTP client? Sorry, that interface is copyright. Your own web server? Ditto.

APIs are the most functional part of computer programming -- they tell you 'this is how you communicate between parts A and B.' Yet, copyright is intended to only protect expression, not 'how' you do anything -- that's the realm of patent law. And while Oracle has patent claims mixed in here, Oracle isn't claiming a patent on the Java API.

I'm getting a distinct sense lately that we may be coming to the end of the era of innovation and the beginning of an era where it's essentially impossible to invent anything or innovate in any way unless you have a powerful corporate sponsor backing you. Unless you have a sponsor with a big patent collection of their own and deep pockets, how can the little guy possibly hope to defend himself against a bevy of lawsuits that cover even the most trivial or obvious of ideas these days?

Oracle here isn't even saying that their code was stolen, they're suing a company for writing their own code that implements the same *SYNTAX* as theirs.

Think of it as an age where the Wright brothers have just pulled their plane to a stop only to be greeted by an army of process servers serving them with dozens of expensive patent lawsuits on the shape of the prop, the design of the stick, even the IDEA of a "craft that flies."

Considering how effective the U.S. government has been at "persuading" countries around the world to implement carbon copies of its IP legislation (not to mention getting them to extradite their own citizens for U.S. IP violations), I wouldn't get too comfortable if I were you.

This sounds an awful lot like the arguments that AT&T brought forth against Berkeley regarding the Unix System V vs. BSD arguments back in the early '80s.

AT&T rightfully lost those arguments, and BSD moved forward.

If Oracle succeeds with this, you can expect whoever holds the AT&T copyright nowadays to come after Linux and other Unix-like systems again, despite them just following what are now documented standards accepted by the industry.

Oracle's arguments should be rejected for the same reasons as AT&T's.

I was under the impression that Google had used the Java GPL source to compile their core jars. I later had it clarified that such is not the case; they used the Apache source.

A decision in favour of Oracle would throw the entire computing industry overboard and cause no end of harm to the industry.

If Oracle succeeds with this, you can expect whoever holds the AT&T copyright nowadays to come after Linux and other Unix-like systems again, despite them just following what are now documented standards accepted by the industry.

Call me silly, but I don't think Novell would have spent the last half of the previous decade indemnifying Linux users and defending it's UNIX copyrights if it intended in turning around and suing them for the exact same thing SCO was trying to do.

What about all the sockets implementations, including Windows, that use the Berkeley sockets API? How about every implementation of the standard C library, which uses the API from the original Unix C library?

Or how about PCs themselves? IBM holds the copyrights to the original PC BIOS API. And not a single machine today uses a BIOS that was written with a license from IBM to reimplement the BIOS API. That was the whole point of the Phoenix and other compatible BIOSes. If the old holding in the case between IBM and Compaq/Phoenix is invalidated, can IBM enjoin the production of every PC system out there (including x86-based servers) and demand the destruction of all infringing copies (ie. every single PC-compatible system including x86-based servers) as allowed under USC Title 17 Section 503 [cornell.edu]?

These days it seems that judges are at best arbiters of legal technicality. Their abject ignorance of so many everyday technical, scientific, and artistic issues is becoming a significant threat to our economy and our society.

You're taking a fairly clear case, such as Google's use of Java APIs (which are being used by Google as if they were completely free and under public domain, even though a really big chunk of Oracle's business is in tight integration of Oracle database products with Java, which is technically their property as it was Sun's), and trying to extend it to cases that are really, really unclear. The owners of C suing C++? What are you talking about? Someone...maybe one of the various Unix variation's owners...who owns some of the algorithms behind the stdio apis suing Bjarne Stroustrop? Random companies? And wouldn't they get sued themselves for deriving from earlier works if that were true? That's highly unclear. Just like it is with a lot of those other technologies you rattled off, many that are at least partially IN the public domain and can be derived from as is their nature as object oriented languages.

In a nutshell, I know how many of you are Android fanboys and I understand that there will be some who whine about Oracle suing Google over their misuse of their technology, but basically anyone even slightly familiar with Android's Java implementation knows that it's not quite "real" Java. And Microsoft got their pants sued off for doing basically the same thing (and people didn't complain so much about the end of programming as we knew it because it was Microsoft), so there is certainly a precedent for this lawsuit. Google just needs to remove all that Java from Android and replace it with their own framework. Other mobile operating systems have done that already. Everyone who knew anything knew this was going to happen, but Android got too big, too fast, and by doing so they would break a huge number of third party apps (as in, probably all of them) and anger a lot of vendors who've been selling systems with Android on them. That's the main reason why Google would settle this case and pay up if it keeps going. However, it's awful doubtful to me that the Netscape people will have a solid case to sue everyone who uses javascript, and that Bjarne Stroustroup will get sued for C++ by some Unix property holder. Any judge would throw that out because there's no clear cut case there with companies sitting on those properties that they are being negatively impacted by the "misuse" of one of their properties (and that's even if their patent holds up under review anymore).

It is a zero sum game at this point. If this actually becomes precedent, Oracle would get obliterated, along with everybody else. Plenty of languages have come before Java and you better believe there is some major api overlap. I cannot wait to watch the world burn when Oracle is forced to pay a 50 million dollar license for the use of the copyrighted ToString() function.

is the most backward, selfish and anti-progress idea ever. To think that the only time anyone would solve a problem would be if they had an enormous financial reward coming their way. What about the benefits of solving the problem itself? Is that not enough anymore?

We live in a world where everyone wants to assign monetary value to things.

In such a world, the design of an API is serious work. We've all used good APIs and bad APIs. It is a very skillful operation.

Not saying if this is the ideal world or not... just that it is the world in which we live in. We live in a world of professions (lawyers, doctors, accountants...) where they protect their trade and professional quality.

One possible solution is if APIs want this protection, then they should have to explicitly declare it. The 'market' will to a large extent respond appropriately. Companies that declare their APIs copyrighted will be handicapped. There will be fewer compatible tools. Fewer developers will train themselves in the API...

There are already well-established anti-trust and anti-monopoly regulations to protect against abuse in such cases. They must charge 'reasonable' fees...We've been through such cases before... for example with rail road operators.

Indeed. If they rule in favor of Oracle here, I have a strong feeling that recursive lawsuits (Java -> C++ -> C -> ASM) will eventually engulf the entire industry. What it will do to businesses is nothing compared to what it will do to universities. Imagine an assignment to implement an API, only to find out its violating someone's copyright. And all the SE / CS & friends people know that that's about 50% of what you do when studying for your major.

The good news is that programmers will suddenly be worth that much more (as no one will want the liability of being one); the bad news is that even horrible programmers will suddenly cost a few million to employ, and require staff to ensure no ones agreements were being violated anywhere.

Google (Schmidt, personally) has testified in court [computerworld.com] that Google did a clean-room implementation of Java. So far, Oracle's argument that Google did not do a clean-room implementation amounts to, "Uh uh! No they didn't!" [informationweek.com]. Also, to nitpik, you can't "lift code" from an API.

Be able to, sure... But they are more wise than that. Doing something asinine like that would kill them.

Microsoft isn't headed by a megalomaniac like Ellison who is unable to see that other companies are getting REALLY paranoid about further use of Java. (We've discussed dumping it where I work.) And Oracle DB as well.